Viability of 100% crit LB build PvE/ WvW
Erm…full buff this build has ~133% crit chance lol.
Dump the sigil of perception and get a different weapon on swap like sword/axe or gs. That alone will improve the build x2.
(edited by Justine.6351)
1. You have way too much precision. Everything above 100% crit chance is wasted. Since ranger has decent access to fury (+20% crit chance) and 10% increase when flanking, it is better to aim for a maximum of ~ 70% with spotter (~ 63% without). Full zerk gear (exotic), ranger runes and precision food would be more than enough. Basically still 100% crit chance most of the time, much higher power and better sigils, resulting in overall higher dmg.
2. Traits:
Drop Wilderness Survival for another traitline, any is better. For solo open world stuff i would recommend Beastmastery. Nature Magic with traited spirits for soloing champs. Druid if you want to bring some support for allies.
Predator’s Instinct is a pretty weak trait. Clarion Bond is a much better option.
Light on Your Feet is pretty useless too, especially in combination with Steady Focus. Use Quick Draw instead for more Rapid Fire or Barrage.
The build would then look more like this for example (you can use air on both weapons instead of bloodlust, i’m not sure, which one is better).
It is not the most efficient PvE build, but for open world PvE it should work fine.
mmmm almost good, first and most importantly why two longbows? Like someone said before me a greatsword or sword/axe would be so much better. Second you have too much precision. way to much. You should substitute that gear for berzerker or at least most of it, maybe marauder for extra vitality? up to you.
I was a power ranger before it was cool.
Guild Leader of Favorable Winds [Wind]
Guild Leader of Favorable Winds [Wind]
First off, some facts about the Longbow. Quick Draw drops the cooldown on Rapid Fire to 2.5 seconds, which is about the same cast time that Barrage has. This means you can switch to longbow > Rapid Fire > Barrage > Rapid Fire > Swap weapons, making Longbow a very strong burst damage weapon, but not so great at sustained damage. As such, I’d recommend dropping your second longbow for a Greatsword or Sword, for reasons I’ll explain in a moment.
Next, let’s talk about the Ranger’s role in parties. Rangers are what I like to call ‘offensive supports’ – their damage isn’t top tier, but they can MASSIVELY buff the DPS of their whole party through a number of different trait lines and utility skills, namely Spotter, Frost Spirit, Glyph of Empowerment, and Grace of the Land. Heal as One and Strength of the Pack are both great skills, but Triple Signets is almost memetic in how bad it is – it doesn’t provide your group with any meaningful bonuses, and it doesn’t really do much to help your own damage either.
Regarding damage output, Longbow is a pure damage weapon, and so are Sword/Greatsword, so I feel they’d be a good fill-in for that second weapon slot. I’d also reccomend dropping the whole Condition Damage thing as a result of this – even with Sharpened Edges, you just won’t be applying enough conditions to make good use of it.
I assume by your post you’ve got Heart of Thorns, but I’ve drafted up a couple builds for you to consider that revolve around that Longbow – one is group dps, one is self DPS.
DPS Support: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNQQNBjYD7kSFoVFsmVwiFgrFssHYL3uAwojZgFwGBwx176e9EmG2JA-TRSBwAUOCAFV+B4hAgw83jLAwz9HQpbIiSwbq/QIARLAA-e
This is what I run. The utilities are focused on party buffing, but with Hunter’s call hitting 16 times and sword granting my pet might on crit, and Strength of the Pack, I can usually pop Heal as One after Hunter’s Call for a full 25 stacks of Might. Cats are one of the highest DPS pets in the game, and the Fury and Might they produce helps spread buffs to your party as well.
Beastmaster DPS: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNQQNBjYDbkSFaVxSWwiF4axweQt3eAM6fHUuPNPwB8IciTDzE-TRSBwAP3fooyPAPEAU6GioE8m6PUOCAPuAAIM/RIARLAA-e
This is what I ran pre-HoT. Not as much party buffing, but it’s got more personal DPS than the build above. Very similar damage strategy, but this one has much higher quickness uptime, and with your pet getting might on crit, you’ll be hitting those 25 might stacks with Heal as One more often. Just remember to switch pets often with this build – 15s cooldown on a few seconds of quickness can really add up over time.
It’s worth noting that the current meta for ranger is condition damage, but as I’ve never played condition damage ranger in pve, I’d rather not try and provide tips or builds for it – it doesn;t use longbow, but if you’re interested in it, I’d suggest checking out Metabattle.
Who’s a good boy? Not you, since you aggro’d the BLOODY CHAMP-
(edited by Maximum Potato.5923)
First of all sorry for long post, but I hope it will help.
So… good thing about having 2 longbows is that you can trigger Quickdraw. Bad thing is that they share cooldowns and as mentioned before they don’t have a good sustained dps. You definitely don’t want to take it for dung, but it might be viable for WvW. In this case I’d recomend taking Shared Anguish, and Wilderness knowledge, with a two survival skills.
In terms of group play and meta, it depends on the content. For longer fights, condi is better, but for dungs you want to go with berzerker as you have a quite high burst and bosses just melt.
The build Maximum Potato posted is good for pug groups with no might, but if you have a PS War, you want to run something more focused on buffing the group instead of focusing on your dps. (Also Axe off-hand is higher dps than warhorn as Axe 4 hits twice and even whirling defense is a small dps increase.)
If you have a revenant in the party, swap out the tiger for a linx/jaguar for higher dps. I found I rarely swap out the pet, as it causes it to loose buffs (please note that without beastmastery, you don’t gain anything from swaping pets). So most times I have a electric wyvern (for breakbars) or a smokescale (for smoke fields) on swap instead of two felines, but you can also keep the linx/jaguar as a second pet if your pet is dying. In this case you might want to take Clarion bond to help upkeep fury on the group.
Just a few more tricks, you might want to keep a staff and a warhorn in the inventory for blasting might and stealth. Warhorn is especially useful for blasting as it also give swiftness for skips or fury for combats. You can use it before combat and swap weapons to your combat set before engaging.
About condi ranger/druid, I will not mention as it doesn’t seem to fit your style. But if you’re interested you can always check youtube videos for raid content with condi druids.
Membro d’Os Lusitanos [PT]
(edited by So Pra Mim.2506)
This is the build i was running for PvE until recently and when dueling with guildies. Very high spike damage.
‘Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back.’
This is the build i was running for PvE until recently and when dueling with guildies. Very high spike damage.
You are running into a lot of mistakes with the build that result in you loosing efficiency.
For the armor, as it was mentioned before you should consider fury gives 20% crit chance, spotter is 7% and banner of discipline gives another 7% and Hunter’s Tactics another 10%. If with any of these you will go over 100% Crit chance, you are just wasting stats.
Signet of the Hunt is useful when you combine it with big hitting attacks, such as Maul. If you use it on rapid fire or barrage, it’ll just trigger on the first hit. Plus, you have easy access to swiftness (everytime you change weapons, elite) so the movement speed is not so important.
Signet of renewel is a bit unreliable for pvp as you can’t control it and a condi burst will likely kill you or your pet (if you trigger it). In PvE, there are not so many conditions flying around and taking healing spring for a group wide condi cleanse might be better (not talking about raids as usually you just take druid). Signet of the Wild is actually one of the best skills we have and can set up a huge burst if you trigger it.
Going to traits, Predator’s Instinct is situational and you don’t have any other traits synergizing with it. Any other choice is far better.
Lead the Wind is good for pvp if you’re ranging, however it doesn’t fully corresponds to a 10% increase in dps, and, especially for PvE, you get far better results with Predator’s Onslaught.
Light on your Feet competes with Steady focus. It forces you to dodge while Seady focus requires full endurance. You gain much more from Quickdraw, allowing you to use 2 longbows and proccing QD on Barrage, allowing for perma cripple, and thus access to both Predator’s Onslaught and Steady Focus. In PvP it allows you to set up consecutive Rapid Fire’s for an unexpected and deadly burst.
Going to Wilderness Survival, it’s usually taken for pvp or for condi builds. Expertise training is a big dps increase to your pet and amazing for other strategies as well. It goes well with Sharpened Edges, increasing duration of bleeding from your pet. Also, it increases duration of fear, taunt or immobilize. Making it very important to set up bursts in pvp.
Refined Toxins and Poison Master are decent together, but consider you have no Condition damage. If you are planning to have the pet apply conditions, then you should switch frequently and take Clarion’s Bond on MM.
Membro d’Os Lusitanos [PT]